2018. vol. 15. No. 4

For decades, Soviet psychologists were engaged in the search for the cell (unit) of the psyche. The idea to transfer the ‘goods’ (the classical cell of the political economy of Marxism) into the sphere of psychological constructions seemed tempting. During the subsequent critical review, each of these “cells” has never emerged as the sole creator of the mental. The paper proposes a different interpretation of the mental world: it is formed not by a single “cell” in its development, but by a complex, multi-stage, internally connected, but qualitatively specific system of categories that finds sources for the development and internal organization in nature and society. The categories were inentified that form pleiads and clusters in theoretical psychology, the “theory of theories”, in which psychology reflects itself. The pleiade of the categories of natural causality indicates phenomena that can be documented by objective methods, “from the outside” (biophysical data). The pleiade of protopsychological categories contains noumena (intelligible entities). A pleiade of basic psychological categories refers to phenomena that are available for introspection. The pleiade of metapsychological categories contains ideas (unity of the thought and the conceivable, self-fulfilling representations). The pleiade of extrapsychological categories are controversies (discretions that instigate a diverse reinterpretation of existence and the mutual criticism of ideas about it by different researchers). Each of the clusters of categories reflects a fundamental dimension of human existence. Such are substantiality (organism, being, subject, the I, personality); orientation (deficit, need, motive, value, ideal); activity (metabolism, reflex, action, оbject activity, freedom); cognitivity (signal, sensation, image, consciousness, mind); bias (selectivity, affectivity, experience, feeling, meaning); co-being (synergy, coexistence, interaction, communication, involvement); and reality (environment, field, situation, objectness, world). There are different logical mechanisms of the horizontal (pleiades) and vertical (clusters) integration of the categories inherent to the process of their theoretical synthesis, which reflects the logic of the phylo-, socio- and ontogenesis of human beings in their becoming and development.

The paper introduces the concept of social change in the context of social psychology. There are three levels of social change. (1). Radical transformations of the type of social relations and the economic formation through social revolutions. (2) System-level changes of specific domains of social practice such as education, mass communication, etc.. (3) Changes affecting vital activities of small groups or separate individuals. The psychological aspect of social change (especially of the two upper levels), is limited by the study of the individuals’ perception of these changes, which sets the limits of competence for psychology in studying macro changes. However, the third level of social change makes the field of both social and, incidentally, general psychology. The specifics of the psychological study of social change at different levels is associated with different layers of methodology ranging from a general philosophical basis to special methods of research; the contribution of different layers of methodology varies across the levels of social change. The issue of resistance to change also requires different treatment depending on the level of analysis. Also discussed are the possibilities and limitations of an experimental research strategy. Lack of recognition of a broader social context is stated as a weakness of contemporary social psychology that needs to be corrected. Focusing on changes would bring social psychology closer to life problems, because the human situation in general is always a social and a changing one. Facing the challenge of change, an individual is involved with an inner conversation or an inner struggle to adapt to the change while maintaining personal self-esteem.

The paper is focused on the history and modern practices of creating and applying interactive exploratory objects and worlds that provoke curiosity in the individual and require exploration and experimentation to learn them and to achieve practical goals. The development, use and demonstration of a wide range of exploratory objects (play, educational, psycho-diagnostic, etc.) in various fields reflects an increasingly wide spread belief: one of the basic human abilities that is needed now and will be in demand in the future is the ability to cope with novelty, including through active exploration and experimentation. Five interrelated directions for the development and popularization of exploratory objects are identified: science; educational practice; assessment; game practices; and literature, art, official and unofficial journalism. Parameters of specially developed interactive exploratory objects and worlds in the context of preparing for encounters with novelty and complexity are discussed. The triangle of tests of intelligence, creativity and exploratory behavior in the space of regulation – freedom is presented. Two types of motivational challenges when exploring new objects are described: exploration for the sake of the very process of cognition and exploration for the sake of desired practical effects. The issue of features of exploratory objects that stimulate posing and solving epistemic problems rather than pragmatic problems, and vice versa, is raised. In conclusion, possible reasons for the mass development and supply of exploratory objects and worlds are formulated.

The aim of this study was to identify differences in factors related to productivity in different micro-domains of literary creativity (writing prose and writing poetry). This study examined the relations between values (according to S. Schwartz’s approach), motivation types (according to SDT by E. Deci and R. Ryan) and creative writing productivity among “poets” and “writers”. The sample consisted of 240 representatives of “little creativity” involved in writing poetry or prose during last year. The research used such questionnaires for data gathering as revised PVQ-R by S. Schwartz, authors’ questionnaire to measure frequency of creative behavior (based on CBI by S. Dollinger) and questionnaire of motivation to creative behavior developed by the HSE International Scientific Socio-Cultural Laboratory on the basis of E. Deci and R. Ryan's questionnaire. We used such methods of data processing as confirmatory factor analysis, T-test for comparing means, regression analyses and path-analysis in AMOS. We revealed that “poets” and “writers” have differences in values and their relations to creativity. For poets Social Focus values were more important than for prose writers, while for prose writers Personal Focus values were more important than for poets. Different sets of values were related to literary creative productivity among “poets” and “writers”: Openness to Change and Self-Transcendence values among “poets”; and Conservation, Self-Enhancement and Self-Transcendence values among “prose writers”. Autonomous motivation played a mediator role in the relations between values and creativity in both groups. Thus, the conducted research revealed the heuristic potential of the approach differentiating creativity in micro-domains.

The problem of psychological state of modern Russian society is in the focus of the analysis. For the purposes of the quantitative estimation of this state the author used a Composite Index elaborated by him and based on the integration of 6 primary indicators: Index of Mortality from the Diseases of the Nervous System and Sense Organs, Index of Homicide, Index of the Mental Illnesses, Index of the Family Stability, Index of the Social Orphanhood and Index of Suicide Mortality. The Index allowed to estimate quantitatively the dynamics of psychological state of Russian society from 1991 to 2016. The author analyses this dynamics in relation to social-economic and political events. The dynamics of primary indicators united by the Composite Index is also under analysis. Indices of Mortality from Homicide and Suicide reflect the mean trends of the Composite Index. The Index of the Diseases of Nervous System remained stable until 2012 and then showed the dramatic drop, while the Index of the Mental Illnesses remained relatively stable. Indices of the Family Stability and the Social Orphanhood showed complex tendencies, which can be explained by the general dynamics only partially. The latency of the Indices is discussed. The results of other investigations – sociological and psychological, characterizing the psychological state of modern Russian society and its dynamics are presented. The author comes to the conclusion about the existence of socio-psycho-somatic influence implied in the fact that social processes are reflected in the psychological state of citizens which in its turn has important somatic consequences.

Настоящий обзор освещает последние тенденции в области психолого-педагогических вмешательств для детей с расстройствами аутистического спектра (РАС) с учетом стремительного роста числа публикаций по этой тематике в последние несколько лет. В настоящий момент внимание специалистов в области вмешательств при РАС сосредоточено на соблюдении стандартов научной доказательности и высоком качестве исследований. Согласно недавним систематическим обзорам, все комплексные программы вмешательства для детей с РАС с доказанной эффективностью в той или иной степени основаны на научной дисциплине прикладного анализа поведения (ПАП). Реализация таких интенсивных поведенческих программ улучшает траекторию развития ребенка с РАС. В частности, метааналитические исследования демонстрируют существенное улучшение показателей IQ и адаптивного поведения у детей, помощь которым оказывалась в рамках ранних интенсивных комплексных программ, основанных на ПАП. Более того, большинство целевых вмешательств с доказанной эффективностью для детей с РАС либо также основаны на ПАП, либо являются компонентами комплексных программ вмешательств, основанных на ПАП. В последнее время возрастает интерес к модульным вмешательствам, которые позволяют обеспечить высокую степень индивидуализации программы помощи для каждого ребенка с РАС, в то же время удовлетворяя стандартам научной доказательности. Рост числа строгих оценок эффективности различных вмешательств, применяемых в реальных неклинических условиях для компенсации основных дефицитов, связанных с РАС, создает адекватную базу для внедрения и широкого использования вмешательств с доказанной эффективностью в системе помощи людям с РАС, в том числе неспециалистами, прошедшими базовую подготовку.

The study presented in this paper is focused on the development of theoretical models of the dialogic and non-dialogic nature of the personal relationship to the Other. Based on the philosophical and psychological research of the dialogue (M.M. Bakhtin, M. Buber, J. Sartre, E. Levinas, H.J.M. Hermans, T. Maranhao, M. Puchalska-Wasyl, F. Rivetti Ваrbo, T. Zittoun), the author emphasizes the involvement of the individual in various forms of activity that, due to personal efforts, acquire a dialogical character. The “personality’s attitudes toward significances” stand out among these forms, including the relation to another significant person. The author develops an understanding of dialogue as a complete realization of the relation to the Other in the dimensions between-I-and-Other, I-in-Other, Other-in-I, and I-in-Self-with-Other. Non-dialogicity, which rarely happens to be the subject of psychological research, firstly can be defined as one of the possibilities for the formation of an attitude; secondly, as a regress of the dialogical attitude; thirdly, as a binary opposition present in the conscious plane, or “in the shade” of the dialogical dynamics of the attitude; fourthly, as a trend that conflicts with dialogicity in favour of the development of dialogue. Following the multilateral view on the genesis of dialogicity/non-dialogicity in the personality’s relation to the Other, a number of theoretical models have been developed: a model of the dialogic attitude to the significance; models of the I in the context of a dialogical attitude; the existential model of regression in the dialogicity of the I-Other relation; a model of personal prerequisites of non-dialogicity in relation to the I-Other; a model of oppositions to dialogicity in the dimensions of the I-Other relation. 

The article presents an experimental study in which the priming effects were measured in the lexical task based on transposed-letter word pairs. Thirty-six pairs of words were selected, in which one word could be transformed into another with the rearrangement of letters. At the first stage, the participants were given the task “Word pairs” which preactivated one of the two words in a pair. At the second stage, the participants had to perform spatial intelligence test. At the third stage, the participants were performing the lexical decision task in which preactivated, alternative and control words were used as stimuli. We hypothesized that the experimental effect will correspond to the results of previous experiments with unconscious priming, namely: 1) words which are identical to the primes presented before will demonstrate positive priming effect, but 2) words which consist of the same letters as primes but have different meaning will demonstrate negative priming effect. The results showed that the response time for the preactivated words was significantly lower than for alternative and control words. At the same time, the alternative words were identified slower then control words although they were not presented at the first stage, and the participants didn’t know that a new word could be constructed from the letters of the presented stimulus. According to the visual word recognition models, such results could be explained by the notion that this is the semantic processes that are  involved at very early stages of word recognition that cause inhibition of stimuli with alternative semantics. However, taking into account that we have changed the classical procedure of the masked unconscious priming to delayed conscious priming, we suppose that our results demonstrate some general regularities of thinking. For instance, the established effects correspond to the data obtained in E. A. Valueva’s study of the influence of incubation on solving anagrams with two answers. One of the possible theoretical interpretations of the acquired data could be the theory of unconscious negative choice developed by V. M. Allakhverdov.